I would like to share with other teachers these group dynamics that have worked well throughout the thirty years I have had the pleasure of working with adult students in ESL Classrooms (1993 – 2023). I hope you find them useful and please share your experiences with us!
This activity serves different purposes. Here is a «First day at school» proposal. The same dynamics have been used in my class to revise and check banks of vocabulary and it works very well too. [...]
Gran got me started When I was at college I used to spend marvellous summers in the UK, the country I fell in love with when I was learning their language. Among the million things I liked to [...]
If today is September 26th then it must be European Day of Languages! So to commemorate this here is an activity for (upper)intermediate to advanced students using luvvoice . AIM: [...]
Extracurricular activities can be excellent opportunities for students to learn foreign languages in less formal contexts. It is common practice to organise end-of-course meals or celebrations as [...]
This is just a variation of «Indian secrets» when we take the opportunity to exchange good reads with classmates. A good activity to close-up the first term, for instance, before school breaks up [...]
An ESL teacher for absolute beginners with an emotional intelligence approach will hopefully find this ice-breaker useful when preparing in-class activities for their newly grouped students. What [...]
Connection before correction I have chosen to use this wise phrase by Jane Nelsen and Lynn Lott as the headline of my blog entry today: giving feedback to students. Time is golden, no need to say [...]
Exam stress can be dreadful The times I have heard good hardworking students say this, is innumerable: «after all that work my mind just went totally blank and that was the end of it!» Which is [...]
Music can evoke emotions You can actually change your students mood by just playing the right music. Perhaps something lively for after lunch lessons or end-of-day sessions. Or maybe some [...]
Experiential stays Long experience as a teacher and most importantly as a long-life student, tells me that whatever one learns through practical instances gets registered best. Even more so if it [...]
